News & Press

Better Life Properties prides itself on staying on the pulse of the real estate and investment markets, and this platform allows us to share information we feel is pertinent to our client partners. We also have many current projects and exciting news to share, so consider this page your one-stop shop for facts and resources about our company and the industry’s "big picture."

Welcome Gary Mountjoy

May 1, 2012 - Better Life Properties is proud to announce the hiring of Gary Mountjoy as the company's Marketing Manager. Gary's background includes inside/outside sales, recruiting, marketing, territory management, and sales training. Gary is originally from Indianapolis, IN and resides locally in Pooler, GA with his wife and two children. Gary is a retired, Non-Commisioned Officer from the United States Army. He will be working with Kristen Lee of BD Creative Consulting and MD Design on marketing strategy and promotion projects on behalf of Better Life Properties.

Articles

When Vena Jones-Cox entered the foyer of the once-grand Colonial-style home in downtown Columbus, Ohio, she stepped onto a wood floor that was so moldy and mushy that it actually wiggled. As Cox proceeded down the basement stairs, they disappeared from underneath her.

"I found myself lying on the floor," says Jones-Cox, 45. "Staring at a dead rat, by the way."

The house tour from hell didn't stop her from making an offer on the place. While she was at it, she bid on some other houses, too. Forty nine houses, actually. (continue reading)

You are foolish if you don't do everything you can to take advantage of this.

It is probably the greatest opportunity for you for the next 10 years.

And it is here now. Time's "a-wasting" actually... You're about to miss the best moment, if you don't get on it, right now. The "V" bottom (as I call it) – where you can get the very best prices – is passing you by as I type. (continue reading)

A nation's homes shape the quality of its citizens' lives. Homes are where the workaday world ends and family life begins. Life's passages take place in our homes; they are where children grow up and memories are made. Homes form the building blocks of every community.

Not since the Depression has a man-made disaster so threatened America's homes and housing stock as the plague of foreclosures that began with the subprime meltdown of 2006 and continues to this day. (continue reading)

In the dorky world of real estate economics, the creation of a new housing category should be a major event, on par with, say, the discovery of a new solar system or the cloning of a pig.

Strangely, single family rentals (SFR), even though they are now a multi-million property segment of the nation's housing stock, have been the Rodney Dangerfield of housing. They've received nowhere near the respect they deserve. Perhaps that's because SFRs are entirely the creation of a new breed of low key Main Street real estate investors and have, until recently, escaped the attention of Washington politicians and Wall Street financiers. (continue reading)

Let’s say you have, give or take, $70,000 in your Wall Street investment account, or 401K. This account generates $500/mo in income. You've been adding $1,500/mo out of your after tax salary to the account, resulting in a monthly investment of $2,000 — 25% of which doesn’t come out of your family earnings from work. (continue reading)

I coined that incredibly original phrase about this time last year in a post on my own site. The post duly noted that the convergence of three factors, crucial to long term real estate investing. Interest rates at historically low levels, price/rent ratios mimicking 1958 textbooks, and blue ribbon locations sporting smallish newly built income properties, have become bosom buddies since around early 2010. That's two years of investing in the only perfect storm I've ever witnessed first hand in my career, which began in 1969. (continue reading)

The only safe and consistently profitable route is long-term investment.

Real estate is not a 'get rich quick' investment route. It pays off only when one invests in a property for at least 3-4 years. Even with a long-term investment horizon, one needs to have a clear exit strategy in mind before one buys real estate as an investment. During the peak of India's real estate markets in early 2008, a number of investors would 'flip' their properties (buy a property, hang on for few months for the prices to go up and then sell it for an instant profit). (continue reading)